


Integration (or: Take My Night and Make it Bright With Stars)

by Paper_Crane_Song



Series: Latency [4]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s02e08 The Communicator, Episode: s02e09 Singularity, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper_Crane_Song/pseuds/Paper_Crane_Song
Summary: Malcolm has been experiencing PTSD sinceThe Communicator, but it is only after a routine away mission that people start to realise.
Relationships: Jonathan Archer & Malcolm Reed, Malcolm Reed & Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Series: Latency [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672780
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	Integration (or: Take My Night and Make it Bright With Stars)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final instalment of this series. If you haven’t done so already then I think it would probably help if you read the other instalments first (or at least the previous one, _Exposure_ , which describes the away mission).
> 
> The subtitle is a prayer from an old English prayer book. 
> 
> Thanks for reading along, and any thoughts or constructive criticism would be gratefully received.

_The only antidote to brokenness is the whole self. Maybe to heal isn’t to erase the scar, or even to make the scar. To heal is to cherish the wound._

\- The Choice: A true story of hope by Edith Eger

* * *

**Malcolm**

It only takes a moment for Phlox to declare them free of contaminants, and before he can collect his thoughts they are being released from the decon chamber.

“Why don’t you go on ahead, Malcolm,” the Captain says, as T’Pol and Hoshi leave. “The doctor and I’ll meet you in sickbay.”

“Aye sir,” he says woodenly. He starts walking in a daze, unable to quite process what just happened. 

Crewmen pass him in the corridor but he has the curious sensation that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has dropped out of the life which they are still living. It is the same sense of dislocation that he experienced on the planet when the guard led him out to be executed; the set-apartness that came from knowing that in ten minutes the soldiers would still be breathing and he would not. 

When a man appears at his side, saying “Hey Malcolm, wait up,” he sees the face of the guard and he flinches backwards into the bulkhead so hard that his teeth snap together. 

Trip is in front of him mouthing something but he can’t hear anything over the roaring in his ears. His heart is pounding and even though he knows it’s Trip he can’t seem to get a grip on things. All of a sudden he is too hot and Trip is too close, and he tries to turn away, lifting heavy limbs to push Trip back but Trip misconstrues this as a request for support and so grabs his arms, pulling him even closer, and that ramps everything into overdrive.

_“Don’t,_ ”  he says, or he thinks he says. He is sweating, melting, and now other people are crowding in, eyes everywhere, and his stomach flip flops and he has the horrible inevitability of knowing he is going to be sick. He manages to shove Trip away and then he hunches over on the deck and throws up. After that he just kneels there, hugging himself, surrounded by boots and legs, trying to stop the tears from coming.

On the periphery he is aware of another pair of legs shooing the others away and gradually the boots disperse and he feels cold metal pressing into his neck. 

“Something to calm you down, Lieutenant.” 

A sharp pain and the deck tilting and someone catching him as he falls forward. 

* * *

**Trip**

“What just happened?” he says to Archer, but Archer’s face is closed and grim. 

“Later, Trip,” he says, following the retreating medical team and Trip is left standing in the corridor, shaken, helpless. He looks at the mess on the floor and then quickly looks away again. At least he’d caught Malcolm before he could take a nosedive into it.

Perhaps Hoshi can give him some answers; after all, she was on the away team with Malcolm.  He finds her in the storage room, sorting through the equipment from the away mission. 

“Hoshi.”

“Commander.” She seems distant, lost in thought.

He decides to come straight out and say it. “Did something happen to Malcolm on the Sora ship?”

Hoshi looks at him then, troubled. “Why?”

“In the corridor just now - “ He hesitates. Malcolm is an intensely private person, and he feels obscurely disloyal for talking about him in this way. “There was an incident. He was afraid; I don’t know why. The Doc had to sedate him...” He trails off, seeing Malcolm on his knees again and him crouching next to him, listening to those awful sounds Malcolm was making -sobs that hitched, gulps for air - unable to do anything, to even put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, until Phlox had shown up with the hypospray.

He glances at Hoshi only to see the same dismay mirrored in her expression. 

“He was scared on the Sora ship too,” she says. “And even before we left - remember how he wanted to run some more scans before going across?”

He nods slowly. “I thought he was just being thorough.” But Hoshi’s right. Malcolm had been unduly upset on the bridge. He knows Malcolm is passionate about his work but more and more it feels like that passion has taken on an almost desperate quality.

Suddenly it strikes him that he can’t remember the last time he heard Malcolm laugh.

He realises that Hoshi is still watching him, and something in her demeanour prompts him to ask, “Are _you_ okay?”

She smiles a little then. “I’m okay,” she says, turning back to the collection of communicators, tricorders and padds, “I’m just not sure he is.”

He raps on the storage locker. “Guess I’ll go find out.” And with that, he heads for sickbay.


End file.
